Answer To The Call
by polar-realm
Summary: There are some things that everybody in Spira knows, and the one thing everybody knows most deeply is this: the dead are dangerous.  Lulu & Auron, not quite AuLu


Every night when they stop to rest, aching and tired from the miles behind them, Sir Auron always takes first watch.

The others don't realize it, but Lulu takes first watch as well. She's grown skilled at feigning sleep these past nights, watching through slitted eyes as he sits with that heavy sword across his knees, as he scans the night and keeps the fire burning. _Braska's guardian, _she thinks, testing the words in her mind. _The man in red, the living legend..._ She supposes she ought to be intimidated.

Yuna is right. It _is_ an honor. But legends are tricky things, in Lulu's experience. They have a way of coiling up around you like creeping vines. You pay no mind to them, let them mind themselves, and the next thing you know, they've taken over. And it is easy – so very easy – to lose sight of what the legends hide.

There are some things that everybody in Spira knows, and the one thing everybody knows most deeply is this: the dead are dangerous.

Lulu learned that young and she learned it twice over, and now the knowledge is buried deep and healed over, an old wound become a scar. The dead are to be honored but never trusted, and only a fool would forget it. Heroes, she is certain, must be no different. Chappu haunts her from the Farplane, or the image of him, phantom hands heavy on her skin. And Ginnem, pale and resolute, whispering danger in her ear.

And Auron sits at campsite's edge with needle and crimson thread, stitching up a tear in his coat with practiced hands. It's the same coat he was wearing when Lord Braska passed through her island ten years gone, or at least she doubts he could have found another so like it. He's taken good care of it. She imagines that if she looked close, she could see thin lines of stitching running across the fabric like the scars run across his skin, twisting tracks to mark the broken places.

_Honored,_ she tells herself, and _never trusted_, and she never stops watching close, because Lulu is not a fool.

She remembers it in the desert, that place of stinging winds and no water, when all she can think of is the taste of dust in her mouth and the need to keep walking. It takes them three nights travel, and three days hiding from the worst of the sun in eroded shelters, rationing their water and praying for the best. They move quickly, all things considered. They aren't quick enough.

And maybe it's anger that she reads in the lines of his face, when they cross that final stretch of ground to find the scent of smoke and blood thick in the air, the thundercrack retort of machina weapons and the remnants of a place that should have been safe. And maybe it's even grief, as he bends down to give water to a dying man that Yuna could have healed if Yuna had been here, and maybe it's resignation, and maybe it's something else altogether.

_No matter_, she thinks then. They have to keep going. Yuna's safety is their first – their only – concern.

But she remembers again in the Via Purifico, when she sees him through a veil of mist and shimmering pyreflies, and walks to meet him with fire at her fingertips.

"I thought you were a fiend," she tells him, tilting her head so that her braids fall across bare shoulders, and it isn't – _quite_ – a lie.

He makes an amused noise, low in his throat.

"A wise precaution, in a place like this."

Lulu wonders, looking back at him, if it truly is warning in his voice. But they cut a swathe through that prison, the two of them, back to back and fighting through the darkness. They match each others' steps without word or hesitation, and the storm of ice and lightning in her hands is brutal exultation, because this, at least, is better than thinking about their summoner trapped somewhere in this place. Better than thinking about their summoner in Maester Seymour's hands, and everything that might mean.

And when they find her at last, after too long, her skirts are water-stained and she holds her staff like a weapon, clenched in scraped and white-knucked hands. Kimahri stands beside her, keeping close, and Bahamut prowls at her shoulder. The Aeon turns luminous eyes on them as they step closer, and it occurs to her to consider, for one frantic moment, that it is not only the dead which are dangerous. Then Yuna takes two steps toward them, hesitant, and the spell collapses.

It is Auron she moves to first, and Lulu stills the reflexive urge to place herself between them, as a guardian ought.

"I failed," Yuna says. "I'm sorry." Her voice is wind over sand, and Lulu does not hear what he says to her in return, but she sees the way he holds her tightly, cradles her against his shoulder like she's a child still.

He meets Lulu's eyes across the distance, and bares his teeth in a grim sort of almost-smile, which she answers with a nod of her head and a silent pledge of her own. She hasn't forgotten yet, about trust and about honor, but this has nothing to do with either. When they see him again, they're going to tear Seymour apart. Together.


End file.
